An In-Depth Analysis of the Fire Lancers!

the chinese fire lancers have been torching up the battlefield lately in edge vampires 4 with their unique mechanic and high damage output with many posts online calling them straight up overpowered but are they really welcome to ajunup everyone and let's analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this unique chinese unit and whether or not the call for a nerf currently is justified let's dive right in alright before we begin let's start with some basic stats first of all to unlock the fire lancers you will need to be in the castle age and in the yuan dynasty which means you need to have both the astronomical clock tower as well as the imperial castle built of course if you build the spare way in the imperial age you will retain your access to the fire lancers and potentially produce them with a 30 discount on nearby stables the fire lancers cost 80 food 20 wood and 20 gold to produce for a total of 120 resources in contrast the horseman costs 100 food and 20 wood for a total of 120 as well and the lancer which is identical to the night costs 140 food and 100 gold double the cost of either cavalry at a total of 240 resources because lancer and fire lancer are too similar in name i'm going to call lancers knights from here on out to avoid any confusion of course the fire lancers and the horsemen are classified as light cavalry while the knights are classified as heavy cavalry looking at the castle age with no upgrades the veteran horseman has 155 hp and one pierce armor the fire lancer has only 135 hp and no armor whatsoever and the knight has a whopping 230 hp and 4 of each melee and pierce armor you might be surprised to hear that the fire lancer is the slowest of the three cavalry despite being a light cavalry itself in terms of attack the horseman and the fire lancer have both 11 base attack while the knight has 36. however both the horsemen and the fire lancer have a bonus damage of 11 against range units and here's the kicker the fire lancer not only has an additional bonus area of effect damage of 21 when it charges against units but also a whopping 51 torch damage in contrast the knight and the horsemen have only 16 torch damage which means one lancer does more damage than three of either of them and finally all three cavalry units have an additional plus stand torch damage against siege weapons you may have shrugged off an important detail i just mentioned get this the fire lancers as mentioned before deal 51 torch damage against buildings every two seconds the ram on the other hand does 260 damage every 5 seconds that's right two fire lancers do more damage to buildings than one ram their elite versions do even more torch damage at 55 a hit indeed they are not as tanky but they're cheaper and most importantly they are super fast compared to the rams and can disengage out of bad positions okay on paper they are already looking very very good but let's explore their unique area of effect charging damage mechanic even further to fully understand how they work before we get into the tests when i lined up some villagers and charge attack to the middle villager i had to double check that i didn't do something wrong if you think the lance connects did a ton of trample damage listen closely the fire lancer did 100 of its 21 charge damage to the first four villagers 100 of its damage to the next four villagers behind the first four and 100 of its damage again to the last two in the middle behind the second four villagers this means that if your opponent has equally spaced out units as such you deal a whopping 210 damage in one charged attack and that's only from one lancer as is the case with the lens connects if your fire lancer catches enemy units even more tightly packed then you'll dish out even more damage as you can see here the fire lancer was able to hit 17 villagers simultaneously in one charged attack dealing a whopping 357 damage in one hit obviously this will be a rare occurrence and the actual damage in the game will be lower due to the spacing out of the enemy units so keep that in mind but man if you catch your enemies bundled up you will get some big hits okay but what about the cooldown of this charge can you repeatedly run away and hit again turns out although this isn't written anywhere in the game or on the wikis the cooldown of the charged attack is 10 seconds hence you can technically unleash your explosive charge on your opponents once retreat and do it again within 10 seconds this will be especially effective against units that are slower than the fire lancers in case you didn't know there's a very clear indicator that the attack will be a charged one the fire lancer points his lance straight forward and right at the enemy when instructed to attack whereas the fire lancer approaches the target with his lance pointing upwards when the charge is on cooldown it's visually very easy to tell based on what we see here the fire lancers seem like a powerhouse of a unit but the developers call them quote-unquote weak and melee combat so let's test the validity of that statement how they do against other units and check if there are any easy ways to counter them let's jump right into the tests i will be testing them based on equal resources and for simplicity i'll assume all resources are of equal value also all of the units are fully upgraded generic castleage units okay let's start with the spearman in a 15 versus 10 fight with the spearman successfully bracing for the firelands of his charge the spearmen naturally obliterate the fire lancers with 14 of them surviving the engagement but of course nobody in their right mind would charge into the spearmint head-on so let's try something out turns out even if you micro your fire lancers to bait out the brace and try engaging again the newly patched spearmen do a fantastic job at re-bracing every time the fire lances try to charge in hence never ever engage into a spearmint unless you somehow catch them from behind while they're fighting other units in front of them moving on to the mana terms it's a 10 vs 10 fight with equal resources and my goodness it's not even close the meta terms get absolutely obliterated by the fireworks with all 10 of the fire lancers surviving you should have guessed that the english or the holy roman empire's mana terms don't matter here as well as you can see they simply cannot survive the initial charge damage in short all mana terms are absolutely awful against them as they cannot even disengage or run away due to their much lower speed if they get caught they are dead it's really that simple just for fun let's try the lens connects but i kind of know already where this is going lance connects are much more expensive than the fire lancers but i'll put them in equal numbers just to prove my point oh boy literally zero damage dealt to the fire lancers the fire lancers out range and out nuke the landscapes this is easily the worst engagement you can take against the fire lancers okay let's do one final test before we move on to the cavalry what if we actually use our brain and have three spearmen mixed in with five lens connects well there is a bug with the holy roman empire spears because they refuse to embrace for the charge hence until that is fixed don't even bother using spears against the fire lancers as the holy roman empire or otherwise you'll get shredded okay now let's look into the cavalry moving on to the horseman it's another 10 vs 10 fight with equal resources and just like the mana terms it's not even close with 10 of the fire lancers surviving obviously horsemen are faster than the fire lancers so if you are using the horsemen never ever take this fight and flee whenever you can alright let's look into the knights now since knights cost twice as much it will be a 5 vs 10 fight remember the knights also have a charge attacker of their own and in this tough close fight the knights barely win with a combined hp of only 70 remaining on the knights this means that the engagement can be a coin flip based on how good the charged attack will be of the fire lancers now someone can say as the fire lancers you can charge the knights retreat and then re-engage to win the engagement at the end but you simply cannot do that i know it's counter-intuitive but you have to remember that the knights are faster than the fire lancers and they will always catch up to them and not allow them to charge again hence you'll have to fight the knights head-on and you'll need slightly more than 2 1 ratio to engage comfortably against the knights and win consistently obviously you'll have to be more careful against say french royal knights or when biology is researched in the imperial age here's a curious thought though what if we space out our units to take even better engagements as the knights the fire lancers formation doesn't really matter as the knights will pick a target to hit the charge attack anyway but the fire lance's charge relies on spacing quite a bit let's test it out turns out it really doesn't matter too much as the aoe effect of the fire lancer is simply too large to realistically space them out even further hence don't even bother just charge straight ahead if you're using knights okay let's do another test what if we retreat with four of the knights at the last second and let the one knight tank all of the charge damage of the fire lancers and re-engage again with the four knights would it make a difference turns out it does but only slightly since the fight effectively turns into a 4v10 the advantage of not tanking the fireland's charge dissipates however just as you can micro away your units at the last second so can your opponent hence if they are paying close attention you'd essentially be throwing away a knight it's a risky play to say the least now if i close the loop on the fire lances versus knights with the conclusions above i'd be doing you folks a disservice if some of you have been paying close attention you should have asked for a larger engagement remember the fire lancers are all about shock and one-shotting so let's see what happens in a 10 vs 20 fight absolute domination 19 fire lancers survive as most of the knights are nuked to oblivion just like the lance connects the fire lancers do better in numbers hence the real cutoff against knights is around 10 units of equal resources the larger the battle gets the worse they'll end up for the knights assuming you can get decent charge hits and not back out due to pathing alright the final set of melee units that are left are anti-cavalry cavalry units namely the camel riders and the war elephants in the 5 vs 10 equal resources fight the camels are able to tank through the charged attack as 4 of them survive the battle in a convincing win but as we saw with the knights the results change when the numbers double in the 10 vs 20 fight the camels are barely just barely able to win with one lonely wounded camel walking away alive from the fight when we double the numbers again in a 20 vs 40 fight pathing issues come to play here some of the fire lancers simply cannot find a proper spot to engage against the camel and that costs the fire lancer the engagement four badly wounded camels survive the battle in short if you're fighting against camels ensure that you have at least 15 to 20 fire lancers to have a close fight in equal resources that's it when you think about it it's still kind of ridiculous that an anti-cavalry unit is struggling this much against the light cavalry unit in equal resources hence camels have a slight edge over the fire lances and numbers but i wouldn't consider them a hard counter unless you're fighting them in really low numbers and finally the mighty war elephants this may sound funny but the equal resources fight is three elephants versus 25 fire lancers and guess what the three elephants crush every single one of the 25 fire lancers with more than half of their combined hp still remaining hence even as high as 25 in numbers it's a bad idea to engage against the elephant you'll lose every time no matter how you cut it obviously the war elephants will never be able to catch up to the fire lancers so realistically war elephants aren't really a problem to the fire lancers it's really your choice if you want to do something really stupid with your fire lancers or not to wrap up there is seriously no regular melee units in the game right now that can fight the fire lancers head on except the anti-cavalry units especially the spearmen and the war elephants everyone else can either barely hold on or get absolutely demolished moving on to the range units let's start with the archers normally the equal resources fight would be 15 archers against 10 fire lancers but i'll only use 5 fire lancers to prove a point it's a bloodbath and in case you're wondering what an eco resources fight looks like here it is the fire lances bombarded the archers asses back to mongolia in one charged hit i don't believe there's any other unit in the game that is able to kill archers this brutally and quickly in short if you get caught on the field you're toast pretty much the same thing applies to the crossbows as well yes foot archers die to pretty much all cavalry charges but there's nothing close to fire dancers exploding your arches in literally one second and disengaging away from the battle knights and horsemen take more time to kill your units so you have some more time to react with spears or other melee units to save yourself a bit but not with the fire lancers as a side note longbows with palings in front of them in these scenarios can also work but it's way too unreliable and risky just for fun i try the mangady to see how they fare up against the fire lancers as well since the mangudai are slightly faster you can kite and kill the fire lancers if you're running away in a straight line without losing a single mangodye however as is the case in a real game you often have to change angles and you'll have to look into your economy while you run away hence even with some imperfect micro you still are able to win the engagement with equal resources with some losses overall you shouldn't be afraid to engage the fire lancers with mangudai as long as you have the critical mass and are paying close attention and no don't even try the horse archers or even the camel riders the fact that they have to stop and fire becomes their death sentence as you'll lose your critical mass on the very first stop and eventually lose everything the manganite are pretty much the only ranged units in the game that can deal with fire lancers on their own everyone else needs some sort of melee support and a lot of prayer to not be blown up to pieces well that pretty much wraps it up for the unit matchups but there's one more very important element that we haven't fully explored yet and that's their insanely high torch damage let's start with the siege units other melee units do decent torch damage against siege units with plus 10 additional damage added to their torch damage which is either 16 or 20 depending on whether they are in the castle or imperial age but it's not even close to the damage output of the fire lancers as they get the plus 10 damage as well on top of their insane torch damage they consistently do more than 3 times the damage than any other melee unit this makes them insanely good at sniping siege as they can one shot many siege weapons in numbers and then promptly disengage okay the final piece and perhaps one of the most important elements is the fire lancers insane damage on buildings to give you a better perspective here's every chinese unit you'd use against buildings and their damage output per second remember all other melee units do only 16 torch damage in the castle age so almost one-third the damage output of the fire lancers here's the damage output per second once we normalize things based on resources spent i.e while rams do more damage against buildings in equal numbers fire lancers do more damage when we spend equal resources this fact alone is worrisome but this is not the full story let's get some more perspective first of all fire lancers cannot attack stone walls while other siege units can so obviously this is one of the big differences it's kind of funny that we have to compare a man and a horse with some fire on his stick to complex siege weapons in the first place but hey this is peak age of empire's logic right here but if stone walls are not a part of the equation things get dicey very quickly here's a test of 10 rams going towards and taking out a town center as you can see they do a pretty good job at taking out the town center fairly quickly it takes them roughly 18 seconds to approach the town center from that distance and destroy it in equal resources let's see how 25 fire lancers do in literally two hits the fire lances obliterate the town center it takes them only 11 seconds to approach and destroy the town setter from that distance obviously they can now easily move on to the next target to nuke it down and then do it again and again whereas the rams are slow and susceptible to melee damage of course while rams are susceptible to melee damage they aren't to pierce so let's test against the keeps the rams of course take minimal damage and bring down the undefended keep in roughly 23 seconds approaching from that distance again there are no pathing problems here so the result is optimal for the rams the fire lancers on the other hand bring down the keep in roughly 16 seconds you do lose 3 out of the 25 fire lancers there however so keep that in mind hence if there aren't many archers or keeps around you'll have to be more careful just as you have to be careful around melee units or villagers when you attack with rams as you can see here their damage against buildings is straight up ridiculous although these type of units existed in age of empires 2 such as the air buy or shotel warriors those units were so easy to kill and had so many different counter units you could go for hence they were mostly reserved as meme strategies or in very niche shock scenarios the fire lancers on the other hand can obliterate your archers and melee units in one charge destroy an important building or two and then promptly disengage whenever they feel like they're in danger this is why the fire lancers especially in team games are just awful to play against even if you're having a good game unless you're fully stonewalled one group of 25 or 30 fire lancers can straight up just snipe all of your landmarks in the blink of an eye and that's the problem you'll often find folks on the forums or reddit just dismissing the fact and say hey you should just make spears or you should just wall up but that's not a fair argument spears cannot engage against the firelancers which means a smart opponent will always run away and avoid spears asking someone to fully stone while every game they play against the chinese is also ridiculous it hinders your gameplay because you know you have to wall up every freaking game and one of the most important aspects that people are forgetting here is the fun factor it's just not fun to play against something that obliterates you within a matter of seconds seriously one hole in your wall one mistake one bad engagement and it's game over you play 30 45 60 minutes in a team game only to find out that one hole led to you losing all of your keeps town centers and landmarks within a minute and not to mention that the rusa mongols will get wrecked regardless because they don't get any stonewalls no other units in age of vampires 4 can ruin your game this quickly to wrap up the fire lancers can either destroy or take disengagements against every melee unit except the spears the camels and the war elephants and they straight up destroy all range units except the mangudai on an open field they are excellent raiders excellent chargers excellent against buildings excellent against siege units and have excellent mobility all for the price of a freaking horseman and they train faster than any other comparable unit via easy to build stables with very limited counter play against them did i mention that you can also get them 30 cheaper through the spirit way as well so to answer the initial question i posed yes i do believe that the fire lanters have way too much going on for them in the current patch and they need to be tuned down personally i think their aoe damage needs to be staggered with distance just like the landscapes and not apply all of their 100 of their damage on a ridiculous aoe second i think that knights should be able to do slightly better against them as the fights shouldn't be this close same thing goes with the camels for heaven's sake and third there is no world in which fire lancers should be priced the same as the horsemen nobody in their right mind would choose the horsemen over the fire lancers once they're unlocked i think they should be priced somewhere between the knight and the horsemen to balance them out and they probably should have a slightly longer training speed than the horsemen finally their torch damage against buildings should either be reduced or capped somehow i understand that they can retain their unique ability as raiders but they shouldn't be able to burn down an entire town within minutes make no mistake i'm definitely not calling them to be nerfed to the ground at all and make them useless i just want the developers to tweak them enough to not make the game unfun for players who play against them even if they retain their characteristics we need a better counter play to them than hey just make more spears and chase them away that's not the answer wow this video turned out to be much longer than i originally anticipated as the fire lancer has a ton of nuance to it than most units i hope you've enjoyed this tightly packed analysis of the fire lancers so if you'd like to see more of this type of content be sure to like and subscribe to not miss out on any of the new videos to come the fire lancer was suggested by many of you in the comment section below in previous videos so please continue to comment and give ideas on units or game mechanics that you'd like me to explore further as always thanks for watching everyone remember to brace your spearmen against the fire lancers and see you all in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Age of Noob

Views: 55,903

Keywords: Age of Empires IV, Age of Empires 4, AoE4, AoEIV, AOE 4, AOE IV, Gameplay, Strategy, Strategy Games, Gaming, Real Time Strategy, RTS, Age of Noob, Noob, 4K, UHD, Chinese, Fire Lancers, Unique Unit, Analysis, OP

Id: xKT9uXMv5kQ

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021